Two bad finishes, Stewart put Johnson's NASCAR streak in jeoprady

Jimmie Johnson’s streak of NASCAR Sprint Cup titles could be over at five.

Although it’s too soon to officially count out the El Cajon native, Johnson is 10th among the 12 Chase for the Championship drivers after two of 10 races and 29 points off the pace of points leader Tony Stewart.

Under NASCAR’s new scoring system – which gives the winner of each race 43 points with the last-place finisher getting one – Johnson could be down as many as 29 positions, although a driver could score as many as 48 points in a race through bonuses for winning (three), leading a lap (one) and leading the most laps (one).

Even with the bonuses, 29 points is a lot, particularly when you have to climb over nine other drivers to reach the top.

“I’ve got to score a lot of points while other drivers are going to be scoring points,” Johnson said earlier this week. “It’s not going to be easy. We need a lot of wins. We need to get really hot.”

Johnson can get hot during the Chase. That is how he has won his record five straight Sprint Cup titles.

Johnson has a combined 26 career victories at the eight remaining Chase tracks, including six career wins on the Monster Mile of Dover, Del., site of this week’s third stop in the Chase. Johnson won last year’s Chase race at Dover, where he has won three of the last five races.

But Johnson has finished 10th and 18th in the first two rounds of the 2011 Chase. Never before has Johnson been as low as 10th at any time in a Chase.

His problems started in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway where he was running as high as second late in the race when his Hendricks’ Motorsports Chevrolet ran out of fuel while Johnson was in third on the final lap. He coasted home in 10th.

Last Sunday, Johnson was moving toward a top five finish when he got involved in some late-race banging with Kyle Busch. At one point, Busch turned Johnson sideways, costing him momentum and probably flat-spotting his tires. Johnson fell off the pace and finished 18th.

Meantime, Stewart has won both the first two races and is seven points ahead of Chase runnerup Kevin Harvick.

Nothing about the 2011 season has been quite up to Johnson’s standards. His lone win of the season came last April on the high-banked, 2.66-mile oval at Talladega – although he had seven top-10 finishes in nine races leading into the Chase.

Although Johnson finished second to Kyle Busch in the regular season standings, he slipped to sixth in points entering the Chase because each driver in the playoffs started with 2,000 points plus a three-point bonus for each regular-season win.

Both Kyle Busch and Harvick won four races during the regular season, Jeff Gordopn won three and Matt Kenseth won two.

“My optimism is still high,” Johnson told the Associated press earlier this week. “These first two races did not start as we had hoped that they would, but eight to go, there’s still a lot that can happen. Past experience really helps with the mental side of it.”